


Not caring

by richmahogany



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen, mention of suicide, not canon compliant because of timing but not out of character I hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 01:30:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7385533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/richmahogany/pseuds/richmahogany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the ferry bombing, still reeling from the loss of his friend and his fiancée, Harold has to endure long weeks in hospital and a seemingly endless round of surgeries. At his lowest ebb, it is a conversation with a rather unfeeling young doctor that proves to be the turning point for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not caring

**Author's Note:**

> I know the timing is all wrong for this, but this scenario has been on my mind since I saw the flashback to Shaw's doctor days. It was just too good to miss out on, so I wrote it down.

The lights on the ward had already been dimmed for the night. Everything became that little bit quieter, slower, muffled somehow. Harold prepared himself for long sleepless hours. In preparation for his surgery tomorrow they had stopped his painkillers, and by now the pain had spread from his neck down his spine all the way into his hip and leg. There was nothing to be done but to grit his teeth and bear it. He couldn’t even read to pass the time. He was lying on his back, unable to turn onto his side, and the pain was too much for him to hold up a book.  
He didn’t expect to see any of the staff unless he called them, but now a woman in a white coat entered his room. He recognised her as one of the trainee doctors: a small, dark woman with a perpetual scowl. She didn’t even say anything, she just nodded to him and then looked at his chart. Eventually she mumbled: “Just checking that everything’s alright for tomorrow.”  
“Again?”  
She shrugged. “They like to keep me busy.”  
The woman looked at him and then turned to a file she had brought with her. Harold could feel some annoyance rising in his mind.  
“What?” he said with a tinge of sarcasm. “No words of encouragement? No pretend sympathy? No assurance that it’s going to be alright?”  
Her scowl deepened.  
“No, I don’t do that sort of thing.” She relaxed slightly. “That’s why I’m out of here.”  
“What do you mean?”  
“I mean that I’m giving up being a doctor. Apparently, it’s not for me.”  
“That sounds like someone else has decided that for you. Shouldn’t that be your decision?”  
She shrugged again. “I guess they’re right. To be a doctor, you have to care about people. I don’t.”  
“Interesting. Most people decide they want to be a doctor because they want to help people, do something for humanity, and so on.”  
“Humanity I’m okay with. People, not so much.”  
“I think I understand.”  
“I don’t think you do.”  
“I’m not like you, that’s not what I meant. I like people, but I believe they’re best enjoyed in small doses.”  
That actually got a genuine smile out of her.  
Harold started to enjoy this conversation. It was certainly different to all the other doctor-patient interactions he’d had.  
“So what are you going to do?”  
“Something will come up. In the meantime, they just keep me busy with meaningless stuff.”  
“Like checking on patients which have already been checked on?”  
“Exactly.”  
With a gesture that said “since I’ve nothing better to do…” she plopped down on the chair next to Harold’s bed, took a strip of chewing gum out of her pocket and popped it into her mouth.  
“Sorry, can’t offer you any.”  
“That’s alright, I don’t like gum anyway.”  
There was a pause, but not an unpleasant one.  
Then Harold started again:  
“So what do you think my chances are for the procedure tomorrow?”  
“I told you, I don’t care.”  
“That’s why I’m asking you. At least I thought you’d give me an honest answer instead of reassuring vagueness.”  
“Okay.”  
She immersed herself in his file for a while. Then she said:  
“From what I can make out, there’s an equal chance of no effect at all and some improvement. And there’s a 10% chance you’ll actually be worse off. So, it might help to restore some of your mobility, or it might not, but even in the best case, it’s only going to make a small difference.”  
She looked at him.  
“Seems to me you’re fucked either way.”  
Harold flinched slightly at her language, but he couldn’t disagree with the sentiment.  
“Thank you, that’s about the clearest explanation I’ve had so far.”  
He thought about that for a while, while she was absentmindedly chewing her gum. Something about the dimmed lights, the quietness and, curiously, the abrasive nature of the young doctor put Harold in a confessional mood. He said quietly, half to himself rather than to her:  
“Sometimes I don’t know why I’m still here. I lost the two people who meant most to me. I know I’ll be crippled and in pain for the rest of my life. Maybe it would have been better if I’d died, too.”  
“In your place, I wouldn’t have lasted this long. I’d have killed myself way back. But you’re still here. Maybe that’s for a reason.”  
“What reason could that be?” Harold said bitterly.  
“I don’t know. But you kill yourself when you’ve got nothing to lose. You haven’t, so I’m guessing there’s something holding you back. Some unfinished business. Something you have to do.”  
“And what could I possibly do?” Harold asked in the same bitter tone. “I can barely move, and when I get out of here, I’ll be in a wheelchair. What am I supposed to do?”  
“That’s not for me to say. Only you can figure that one out. Find your purpose. Something you can do from a wheelchair, if you must. If not…well, you can still blow your brains out.”  
“And what would you do?”  
“Told you, I wouldn’t even have gotten this far.”  
Harold fell silent again. It was true, he hadn’t killed himself so far, although he had had the opportunity. But he didn’t see that he had anything to live for either. His whole life had been taken from him in an instant, and what was left was just an empty shell that went on existing because it didn’t know what else to do. The thought of suicide had definitely occurred to him, but he had shied away from it. Why? Could she be right? Was there something he needed to stay alive for? Or did he just lack the courage to go through with it?  
“I don’t like firearms,” he told her.  
“There are neater ways. Especially in a hospital.”  
She spat her chewing gum into its wrapper, put it in her pocket and got up.  
“Good luck,” she said as she left the room. It sounded like sarcasm to him.

During the first two days after his operation his brain was clouded by morphine, unable to form a coherent thought. But as the aftereffects slowly subsided, he started thinking again about what that young doctor had said.  
Find your purpose.  
His purpose had been to build the machine. Once he’d done that, he thought he could return to a normal life. Marry the woman he loved. Run the company with Nathan. Even when he realized that things had taken a wrong turn, he tried to wash his hands of his creation. It was out of their hands, he had told Nathan. Nothing to do with them anymore. Nathan had disagreed. He had tried to save the irrelevant numbers, because he thought that by creating the machine they had been given that responsibility. He had tried to save individuals because he knew their loss would be felt by someone, somewhere. And Harold had tried to close his eyes to that, until he was the one to suffer the loss. He suddenly felt ashamed that it had needed Nathan’s death for him to realize that his friend had been right. Harold had been wrong, callous, selfish. And he had been punished for it. He didn’t deserve to be alive either, he thought.  
But slowly it dawned on him that if he had refused to take responsibility then, it was his duty to take it up now. He felt the guilt weighing on him, for building the machine in the first place, for giving it to the wrong people, and for his refusal to face the consequences. He couldn’t refuse any longer. People would continue to die, innocent people, and he was the only person in the world to do anything about it, because the machine would give him their numbers.  
He had arrived at this realization slowly over the course of days, little by little. He was still unable to focus his thoughts for anything longer that brief periods. Most of the time he was still under the influence of strong painkillers, or, when they reduced his dosage, in so much pain that he couldn’t think of anything else. In some ways his situation was worse than before the operation. He was forced to lie flat on his back, with his neck immobilised in a brace which prevented him from turning his head. All he could do was lie there and stare at the ceiling, and it made him feel vulnerable and helpless, which in turn made him very anxious, particularly when no one thought to give him his glasses. Last night his anxiety had spiralled into full-blown panic, and the nurse had had to give him a sedative to calm him down. But through all this he held on. He had found a new determination to survive, and to get well enough to shoulder the burden that he now knew was his. To die now would be to take the easy way out. But Harold had taken the easy way for long enough, with disastrous consequences. No longer. It was time for him to atone for his sins and help others.  
What exactly he was going to do, he didn’t know. At the moment he wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to walk more than a few painful steps. But even if he couldn’t do anything physical, he had other skills. Surely there was something he could do to help those in danger. And maybe – just maybe – one day he wouldn’t have to do it on his own.  
Despite the pain, the helplessness and the anxiety, Harold was more optimistic now than he had been a few days ago. It was going to be a long, hard road for him, but now he could see light at the end of the tunnel. He would fight, because now he knew there was something worth fighting for.

Harold was lying on his back, staring at the fuzzy outline of the ceiling light – they’d forgotten his glasses again – when the door opened and someone came in. Immediately he was anxious again because he couldn’t see who it was, but then the person stepped up to his bed and bent over him. He squinted and recognized that uncaring young doctor.  
“Still alive, then,” she said in place of a greeting.  
“Yes, thank you,” Harold replied. “You’re still here, I see.”  
She shook her head.  
“My last day. That’s it.”  
“And what now?”  
“Haven’t figured that out yet.”  
She reached into her pocket and put something on his chest.  
“Here, you might as well have that.”  
And before Harold could ask what it was or thank her, she had left the room and shut the door.  
Harold touched the object on his chest. It felt like a small box with wires attached. Carefully he took it in his hands and lifted it up in front of his face. It turned out to be an MP3 player, an older, simple model, with earphones attached. Warily but curious Harold inserted one of the earbuds and pressed Play.  
A male voice started in mid-sentence:  
“…his knee into the man’s chest; he could feel the holster. He yanked the overcoat open, reached in and pulled out a short-barrelled revolver. For an instant, it occurred to him that someone…”  
It was an audio book. Not the kind of book that Harold would ever have chosen for himself, but a book all the same. He reset the player and started to listen from the beginning. It was some kind of spy thriller, full of violence and impossible twists and turns. But it was better than nothing. Much better, in fact. The book was well-written enough to draw Harold in, to distract him from his pain and anxiety, to take him out of the hospital into a different world, just as a book should do. Even if the story wasn’t his cup of tea, the fact that he didn’t have to stare at the ceiling for hours, with nothing but worries about the future to occupy him, improved his well-being immensely. It would help him to take his first small steps on the long and winding road to recovery, at the end of which a new purpose was waiting for him.  
He wished he could express his gratitude to the young woman, whose name he never knew, but he would never see her again. He could only hope that she would soon find a new purpose for herself.

**Author's Note:**

> The audio book is "The Bourne Identity". Personally, I love that book, but I figured it wouldn't really be Harold's thing. Or would it? What do you think?


End file.
